Other Views On What Makes News

July 18, 1993|By Pat Widder.

Bill Applegate, general manager of WBBM-Ch. 2 from 1990 to mid-1993:

"TV news, by its nature, is the popular press. Our best work is done on daily breaking news, and most breaking news has elements of crime and passion. We're not real good at 2,000-word treatises. The medium is not well suited to that (because audiences tune out).

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published July 18, 1993:Corrections and clarifications.In a story about television news in Sunday's preprinted Tribune Magazine, Rick Rosenthal is identified as a news anchor at WGN-Ch. 9, which he was when the magazine went to press. Rosenthal no longer works at WGN. The Tribune regrets the error.

"People who run TV news departments are realizing that to survive in a multichannel world where the audience has available to it scores of different newscasts-or quasi-newscasts-ranging from "60 Minutes" to "Hard Copy," news programs are going to have to stand out, be innovative, bright, highly produced. You stand out through presentation style.

"It's getting harder to do. Everyone has pretty much the same stories, the same technology, the same news budget. It gets more difficult to distinguish yourself from your competitor.

"I don't think the content of local news has changed that much-with one exception: Politics in Cook County was more entertaining and got more coverage during the `Council Wars' years (1983-1987) when Harold Washington was mayor.

"We aren't newspapers like the Tribune and the New York Times. But with bold graphics and compelling copy writing, we can be the New York Daily News. To say one is better than another is a slight.

"As captain of the boat, I have to keep my hand on the tiller and make sure you don't honestly sacrifice credibility and journalistic content.

"The media elite wax romantic about the past glories. But we have all grown up to equate speed, flashy graphics, movement, color-glitz, if you will-as superficial and to equate slow, ponderous, stodgy, graying and deliberate as important.

"The free press in this country has no obligation to teach or preach or hold itself up as the arbiter of social issues or information. That's not what the news business is. We're in the business of delivering or disseminating the news. We were invented to tell them what's happening down the street and around the world."

Mary Ann Childers, 10 p.m. anchor, WLS-Ch. 7:

"Technology has changed everything. Actually, Chicago was slower to change. Smaller markets changed faster because they had to. We had more resources here to draw on (because the networks had operations here). We used to work with three-man film crews-sound, lighting and camera. Then it was a two-person mini-cam. Now it's just the reporter and camera person.

"Being able to go live has made it a whole new ballgame. But it means you have to think and react quickly. You don't have the luxury of coming back and working with an editor. That's where experience really counts.

"And just because you have (the picture) and can go live, do you do it? Everyone's newscasts will have the same stories. It boils down to packaging and marketing.

"Let's be candid here. Once you take out the commercials, sports and weather, we're talking about 13-14 minutes maximum for the news. So when we say we're doing an `in-depth' report, how in depth is it going to be?

"We're hopefully an interesting information program that at the end of the day gives people a grasp of the day. But, at best, we are giving you highlights. Nothing is black and white, but we report black and white (because of time constraints). We can't give colorations, subtleties. It's frustrating."

Mike Ward, news director, WMAQ-Ch. 5:

"The appetite for (local news) continues to grow, but at the same time, the broadcast audience (differentiating over-the-air signals from those received via cable) is only going to shrink.

"The 10 p.m. news is the news of record here and has been for years. It has been a well-fought battleground.

"The city-suburban composition is changing. That's forced all of us to ask a lot of questions about content. We're all just as guilty of running stories about crime and violence that do nothing but report the fact that there is crime and violence. But we're trying to do some different things.

"For example, there's `Town Meeting on Violence,' (a one-hour special hosted by Warner Saunders that aired in prime time earlier that week). Therein lies the dilemma of TV. It was an hour of talking heads about an issue everyone thinks is important, and it didn't win its time period (losing out to "Sirens," a cop drama show on ABC and "48 Hours" on CBS).

"Actually, the special got a 7.4 rating and an 11 share. (Each rating point in Chicago translates to 30,000 TV households. That means 222,000 households watched and 11 percent of the sets actually on during that hour were tuned to WMAQ.) That's not too bad.

"Local TV has to be far more sensitive to the local community. Fairness will be extremely important. And, like it or not, presentation is important in an MTV world.

"We need to do more shows like `Town Meeting on Violence.' We need to have the courage to say a 7 rating is OK. The community is better served by doing those kinds of stories."

Rick Rosenthal, 9 p.m. anchor, WGN-Ch. 9:

"There has been a dramatic increase in the competition for viewers, a growing rush for a relatively fixed number of viewers. And it is a more cost-conscious industry. We'll probably see more sharing of video. We already are with ChicagoLand TV. We're trying to do more with less.

"Some stations are going to trash, slash and burn. At Channel 9, we are a straightforward, meat-and-potatoes kind of news. We try desperately not to be goofy or contrived.

"But we can improve graphics, pacing, maybe increase the number of stories, get tighter writing without eroding the foundation of what we are.

"Everything is compressed in this fast-paced decade of the '90s. We're competing with rock 'n' roll television news."